Tag Archives: differentiation

I had another essay building on last weeks essay on responsibility and accountability planned this week, but I saw a tweet that caught my interest and started me down the rabbit hole of sexual market value again. More specifically, how what constitutes a high quality product in the sexual market place.

Christian McQueen (@TheCadClub on twitter) recently tweeted out the following:

If this trend continues it’ll be very easy for pretty girls world-wide:

1. Be in shape

2. Don’t have grey hair (dye it if need be)

3. Don’t be a hateful feminist

You’ll have your pick of great men.

I’ve touched on this idea before in Gendernomics and previous essays, most particularly in Female Sexual Strategies Part 2. The gist of my argument was that if one has a market, where a need exists and the only options to satisfy that need are poor ones, then those poor solutions can still do remarkably well. This is a function of the contrast effect more than anything, in that if you’re 6 ft 1, and go out with a group of men who are 6 ft 3 and taller, you look short by comparison.

This comes down to the fact that people would rather have a need fulfilled to a minimal degree as opposed to not having it covered at all. If you have to drive in a nail, and you can’t find a hammer at a good price, you may use a wrench or a rock. You have a need you have to fulfill, a preferred way to fulfill it (want) but you will compromise.

As I’ve mentioned, I travel a lot for work, and this means that I also end up talking to a lot of random people on various means of transport and in general. One of the most interesting groups to talk to are women in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who have daughters and granddaughters, as they tend to lament the lifestyle choices of their offspring. This is because back in their day, before egalitarian equalism, it was common knowledge what men wanted in a wife, often embodied in aphorisms like

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” – Know how to cook and take care a man.

“Behind every great man is a great woman” – Know how to support your man and help him succeed.

I could extrapolate much from these simple sentences, however our culture contains enough examples of what type of wife or husband is undesirable in comics, literature and culture. Personally my favorite examples in comics is from Andy Capp and Bringing up Father, both demonstrate the dynamic of hapless Beta male with the domineering, harridan of a wife. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, this was a funny caricature, these days such comics appear almost prescient in how gender relations have developed. Continue reading →